Heat is only weakly emergent. Heat is an aggregate of ordinary motion. If you model the motion of all the particles in a physical system, you model all the thermodynamic properties of that system too. Heat is only emergent in the sense that you don't have to model things at the molecular level to get heat -- you can just model the aggregate property and ignore all that finer detail. — Pfhorrest

The point was that it makes absolutely no sense to talk about the ‘heat’ of a molecule. I am saying it makes just as much sense to talk about ‘consciousness’ at a molecular level - which some people do. I’m certainly open to the ‘consciousness’ equivalent of ‘motion’ ... which our current guesses lie in combinations of neurons and/or cellular combinations. Anything else looks like vainly trying to the the temperature of an electron.

Do you have any suggestions for the ‘conscious equivalent’ of ‘motion’? I’ve not looked at the microtubules idea for a while, but it looked sketchy at best. I think its biochemical - more than fancy enough (needless to say an atom doesn’t have biochemistry, but then some may insist they do due to up/down quarks and such ... which is the core of my dislike of what I tend to see flaunted on forums).

And Dennett uses a very particular definition of ‘free will’ to frame his position as ‘compatibilist’.

That was the reason I stated that such terms need to be put forward with great care.

His position is based on determinism evolutionary processes not some inherent ‘choice’. The issue people have is they believe they could’ve done otherwise where Dennett would say they couldn’t. In that sense he is a hard-determinist and I don’t much care if he chooses to label himself otherwise.

Nevertheless from an ethical position he acts as if he has ‘free will’ in the sense that he could’ve done otherwise even though he doesn’t conclude that he could have. Dennett doesn’t believe the physical laws of nature could’ve been different - quantum weirdness is his ‘get out of jail free’ card though.

I think this is a pretty decent summation of his thoughts regarding his view of ‘free will’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpgCYPqPpnQ

I think I recall watching a lecture where he made a distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘free will’. Stating that we don’t have ‘free will’ (in the sense highlighted above) but we still have ‘choice’ - overtime I believe he switched to saying the ‘choice’ was a kind of ‘free will’.

Again, ethically it is perfectly sane to assume free will as a given - as in ‘I could’ve done otherwise’. To you couldn’t have done otherwise is not the same thing as believing (in a scientifically causal sense) that you had no choice in the matter.

Then there is the case of the phenomenological view of ‘free will’. Posing the question of what determines our course through time frames the idea of ‘free will’ with a particular gravitas - whether it warrants any reasonable degree of our attention is neither here nor there as we’re curious idiots so that it isn’t really surprising that we cling to questions that invest or divest us of a sense of worth/purpose (in terms of the possession of our actions and sense of authorship in general).

Maybe I misunderstood Dennett? If so please correct.

Ethically, yes. In terms of the physical world he is more of a hard-determinism with leeway given to quantum weirdness.

That is nothing extraordinary given that most scientists wouldn’t claim that a deterministic world means we can, or should, act as if we have no choice. That is just one kind of compatibilist position that has, as far as I can see, very dubious reasoning.

The position I put forward is merely that if it is our choice then choosing not to choose - under a false assumption - is pretty silly even though some could argue that it is more comforting (which I would argue against quite strongly).

Anyway, I have a good question for you ...

If you determinism is correct (in the fatalistic sense you seem to have displayed) then it makes no difference what you do as it’s already decided upon (effectively it’s already ‘happened’). On the other hand, if you are actually wrong about determinism, yet believe you have no ‘choice’ then you’re living a delusional life under the false belief that you have no real say in anything that happens to you.

The fatalistic attitude is a useful one for when we’re overwhelmed in life. It’s always easier to blame the world than consider that our actions (which could’ve been made differently) may be the very reason we’re in the current quagmire we happen to find ourselves - even then the common response is to lay the fault at someone’s door if ‘fate’ is a no goer!

As we’re effectively limited creatures in terms of our understanding of the environment we find ourselves in there is a pretty good argument to be made for EVERY position in terms of our attitude towards our effectiveness. Sometimes it pays to be fatalistic, and others it pays to assume we much more capable than we truly are in terms of shaping our paths.

Adhering to either without question for prolonged periods of time reduces our capacity to explore and test ourselves - maybe that too is ‘better’ sometimes in certain circumstances. The crux is the ethic. Your ethic orientation is ‘determined’ by your attitude toward self-reliance and your sense of ‘free-will’. Even Dennett wouldn’t suggest that his sense of ‘hard determinism’ means he lacks responsibility in any ethical sense.

I reckon you’d be better off looking more into the neuroscience of consciousness than focusing primarily on philosophical meanderings.

Within the field there are various tangental and aligned topics that tilt in many directions including determinism, reductionism, functionalism, phenomenology, and various other areas. It can be fun trying to pick out the ideas each present and which direction their personal views tend to be directed.

Start by making strict delineations between terms like ‘fatalism,’ ‘determinism’ (in all its variegated guises), and ‘compatibilism’ (in all its variegated guises). The tread VERY carefully around the use of loaded terms like ‘free-will,’ ‘choice,’ ‘probability,’ ‘chance,’ and ‘entropy’.

It’s a frantically difficult topic to deal with as most readers will come at you with a good amount of vested interest in one, or more, particular areas. A historic account of how these thoughts have developed would be a safe approach I feel.

Panpsychism is trying to solve the irreducibility of conscious experience by spreading it out through everything so that it's a building block instead of just mysteriously emerging. — Marchesk

What’s so ‘mysterious’ about emergent properties? This is where most of the panpsychism ideas look juvenile at worst and idiotic at best. Emergence is a CONSCIOUSLY observable (and scientifically measurable) property.

To repeat what I mentioned in the other thread. Heat is an emergent property, but a molecule has no ‘heat’. Such emergent properties cannot be physically measured at certain levels because they make no sense, yet somehow people believe this is a good argument for panpsychism. Why? I’d like to see an argument presenting how ‘heat’ is an innate property of all matter (including molecules). Of course the argument would require talk of a ‘different kind of “heat”’ in order to remain workable.

The main problem standing in the way of our understanding of consciousness is this silly clinging to some holistic ‘panpsychism’ idea that barely makes any sense, lacks rigour, and conveniently plays with words instead of engaging with critical thought and actual idea that possess a common and workable vocabulary.

Chalmers’ zombies aren’t much of an argument either as far as I can see. Meaning that because some artificial being could be created to act ‘as if conscious’ is equivalent to an actual conscious being. If such a ‘zombie’ was, in effect, said to be identical to a human (neurons and all) yet not consciously aware, then I believe this would be breaking the laws of nature - we cannot ‘logical imagine’ what we don’t understand with any degree of accuracy.

I’m more than ready to be combative against a lot of the ideas orbiting panpsychism as a reasonable premise - not ALL but most I tend to see far too often.

From the gist of the opening page I think I know what you’re thinking about.

Simply put it’s extremely nuanced. Generally speaking humans operate as individual beings and we navigate between what is familiar and what is novel. Being able to differentiate ourselves in a landscape (physical/social/mental) defines what an ‘individual’ is. The ‘state’ part of this is our communal inclinations - we’re not solitary animals (no animal is broadly speaking: meaning the world of every animal is dynamic and so they are never cut-off from it).

What is ‘best’ is a pointless question. The question is more about ‘what are we?’ And the answer to that is a continual process by which we engage in life (actively or passively until death).

The very fact that we split up these ideas as polar items adds further weight to what I‘ve just said. Others are quite right in saying that one doesn’t exist without the other. The way attitudes change does certainly change our parcelling up of these concepts and often enough leads to further separation for further investigation.

There is comfort and safety (possibly leading to stagnation), and hardship and risk (possibly leading to disorientation). Resting in either fully is fatal. Some people - due to personal circumstances - lean moe to one than the other; common factors include upbringing, age, sex, social statuses (within any given group), and health/fitness.

Another point worthy of consideration is the psychological role of the nation compared to that of religion. This is something that has been of significance for some time. What are your thoughts on those in line with the human ‘individual’?

So these are not transhistorical terms, and it is very much an anachronism to ask which came first. Someone posing a similar question in feudal society might have asked: who came first? Priests, farmers, or soldiers? — StreetlightX

Certainly not farmers. We know that much.

I think you were overly optimistic!

I don’t see it becoming accepted within the next century. Possibly ‘laws’ will be loosened to some degree. I can imagine, as there are now, more widespread instances of nudist beaches - meaning having festivals that were something like a ‘celebration’ of the human body (something akin to renewing the ancient Greek games).

There are so many interesting societal habits and rituals we could talk about here.

Write whatever suits your idea best (whatever your idea is). Once you’ve written some/most/all of it you can then ask yourself if it works and adjust as needed.

If ethics interests you write about ethics. If baking interests you write about baking. If they both interest you then you should consider writing about both.

There are billions of ideas out there and out of them millions of them are workable. Then, out of those millions there are hundreds of thousands who try to execute their ideas and only tens of thousands who finish the task. AND of those only a few thousand have any reasonable degree of success ... then keep in mind that absolutely NONE of those are satisfied with their end products.

Aim for perfection but don’t demand it. Write and write and write, learn to enjoy failing and the rest will sort itself out.

As it sounds like you’ve never taken on the task of writing a book before I think you’ll find it better to plan by writing one side of A4 listing what this ‘book’ is about (fill the page!). Then take each of the points from this page and repeat the process.

This will give you a better idea of what interests you, how to write about it, and give you some mini finished pieces (short essays/sketches). Most of it will be trash, but that’s just part of the process - the more you write the less trash there will be to cut out.

GL

That isn’t ‘depression’ it’s just dealing with the hardships of life. Certain environmental factors can trigger depression and some people are much more susceptible to depression than others - it’s a physiological disposition for some.

I guess you could argue that today allows the medically depressed more room to maneuver in than previously - where ‘the mad’ would be locked up alongside ‘criminals’.

Explaining this in the text would’ve helped. Maybe some other people knew what you were talking about, or inferred enough from it, but I didn’t.

The one week limit is mostly for me. I didn’t have time to do one this week but I’ll try and throw something out here later.

Whether or not you post for fun, practice or critique I think 500 words is a reasonable request for those that wish to offer critique (I don’t own the site and there are no rules so post away if you wish).

I think it’s a poor choice for a title.

If you aim to reach a large number of people drop ‘philosophy’ from the title into the subtitle OR present an original approach to the subject matter.

It’s a common mistake for new writers to obsess over the title. We cannot comment really as we’ve not read it and have no idea what you’ve written.

Most people with an interest in philosophy have specific ideas of interest. Those merely curious will likely go for ‘Philosophy for Dummies’ or some equivalent (I imagine there are plenty of those written already to make your contribution insignificant). Therefore you need to bring to the table a unique take kn the subject matter - ie. something like ‘Philosophy and Politics in the late 20th century,’ ‘the history of philosophies in business,’ or ‘Philosophy and Western Culture’.

Unless you have a foot in the door - a reputation in the subject - you’ll have to come at the subject with a fresh perspective. A simple ‘Great Ideas of Philosophy’ book will have a hard time getting off the ground without a weighty reputation (assuming you’re work isn’t simply mind-blowingly brilliant!

Clearly in today’s world it’s nationalism/religion.

There is no other method that comes close to surpassing either just yet. That said consumerism is a contender.

Note: These aren’t ‘philosophies’ though. I don’t think such a question makes sense in terms of ‘what philosophies’ when you’re talking about what is essentially dealing with specific aspects of human life (work ethic and values). I’m also assuming you meant ‘most effective’ rather than ‘best’?

Not sure what this is? It’s less than 500 words and seems truncated. More poetical than philosophical.

What was the intent?

Are you saying having experienced an altered state of consciousness automatically makes someone a ‘mystic’?

I’m doing these on Saturdays instead ... so will give new prompt tomorrow.

It’s just dedication to thinking.

Today people call themselves ‘philosophers’ because it sounds better than saying ‘I’m just thinking about stuff’ - hence the aura of pretension that shrouds it.

Flame dog in it under duress damn filling top made on a with the.

That says it all ;)

I mean logic by logic? Abstracted and applied.

All men are mortal.
I am a man.
I will die.

There are various logical schemes, but propositional logic doesn’t require application to the real world - meaning the nuances of semantics. In the purest state it is mathematical, whilst applied to statements the meaning of terms used has to be agreed upon.

Everything else is imbued with opinion, bias, guesswork, emotion, and un/happy exploration. The boon of the ‘philosophical’ mindset (so to speak) is the ready engagement with thoughts and ideas where the propositions involved are taken as a given for the sake of exploration - science arose due to certain methodologies (measured and applied predictive scheme) mapping onto our cosmological perspectives.

Logic. In practice not application.

Sure, I'm just pointing out the incoherency in your thought experiment. (You asked to hear about flaws). — DingoJones

I guess the flaw here is I didn’t make it explicit enough that predictable experimentation would be useless (no better than astrology). Without a testable hypothesis scientific advancement would grind to a halt.

I was thinking about using a football analogy where current formations became useless, but that’s really weak.

Yeah! A personal and more emotional touch would probably help.

I went for religion and science because they are inherently part of humans cosmological position. Something equivalent, as a reality shift, would be if you woke up one morning and everyone was speaking an alien language - I assume a rational person would conclude they’d had a stroke or something. If brain trauma could be discounted then ... ?

A major problem is that all scenarios where reality is altered require suspension of disbelief - maybe that is actually the key. The way out of ‘zealotry’/‘rigidity of thought’ is to nurture our ability to suspend disbelief. In that sense liberalism and conservatism (at the extreme ends) could maybe be used to represent this?

It isn’t meant to be a commentary on religious or scientific history:

Note: An argument against the impossibility of the situation is redundant as the point is to come to some semblance of an understanding of views that seem utterly beyond our personal perspectives. — I like sushi

If prayer instead of medicine worked for sickness and injury, then the scientific method (followed properly) would adopt prayer as the scientific facts instead of medicine. — DingoJones

It wouldn’t. That isn’t scientific.

Besides the POINT of this is to try an appreciate what the world looks/feels like to those who we may consider blinkered/delusional/naive.

If you don’t like thought experiments that bend reality fair enough. If you don’t get see that it is meant as a means of creating a bridge from zealotry to more considerate thought fair enough again.

Note: this isn’t actually about god, religion or science - that’s merely the vehicle for putting yourself ‘In Another’s Shoes’.

I think your hypothetical example shows something more human - the ongoing divide between the conservative and the adaptable: those that resist change and cling to older concepts that used to satisfy general opinion and those that adapt quickly to the latest rational explanation. — Benj96

That was the general intention.

I was hoping someone could build on it and make it more interesting/accessible and useful. Basically if the entire world started to behave differently from what you’d known all your life you’d - I highly expect - cling to long held heuristics because that would literally be all you knew.

The ability to adapt would be mostly based on the degree to which things changed. A paradigm shift is workable, but if all previous paradigms were left utterly redundant there would be nothing to build a bridge from.

I was posing a thought experiment in an attempt to better understand biases and dogma.

If you can improve on it I’d love to hear how. The short cut you took was completely tangental to what I was setting up.

How long would it take to change these beliefs though? This is especially difficult when previously all the evidence supported your position.

I didn’t refer to any.

Yes, it’s utterly ‘impossible’. The point is to appreciate the unbending conviction of those that go against what experience clearly establishes as false.

In this bizarre scenario - if disbelief can be suspended - the whole of scientific method evaporates overnight, yet the previous use of science holds fast in the minds of those that harnessed it.

This wasn’t meant to be about god or science. It was merely a way of allowing us to consider the stalwart conviction of others that we may deem either ridiculous or idiotic. Appreciating this, I believe, helps us to sympathise and therefore create a constructive dialogue.

I never mentioned any ‘god’ on purpose.

I don’t see how that follows.

Very late reply!

Basically just imagine if you were not able to learn indirectly. — Pinprick

That would be ‘indirectly’ in what sense? If there was no human culture/language then we’d create one via necessary interactions - we’re social beings.

I’m not sure if anything resembling collective behavior could exist without memes though? — Pinprick

As mentioned above briefly the issue is more about where and how you draw a line between what is or isn’t deemed ‘direct’/‘indirect’. If there is no interaction there is no culture, so ‘memes’ in this sense would put an end to all individual to individual communication (there would be no ‘individual’: which is an impossibility for humans).

Yes, when we’re dealing strictly with behavior, but we can’t imitate internal states like beliefs or feelings. — Pinprick

In the broader sense you’re talking about I don’t see how ‘feeling’ and ‘beliefs’ aren’t part of behavior. A behavior necessitates a ‘feeling’/‘belief’ (albeit in a more dispassionate predictive fashion for entities like insects).

our genes are selfish as Dawkins suggests — Pinprick

Dawkins was being extremely liberal with the term ‘selfish’. In the sense that a rock would ‘selfishly fall to the ground due to gravity’. His point for memes being they don’t survive to benefit us or anything, only to propagate and either continue or disappear. Benefits are merely subjective human perspectives.

I should note that in terms of behavior we are empathic. We map our bodies onto items external to our bodies. We see, and seek, causation all around us and, to some degree, see everything as a base representation of ourselves (anthropomorphic qualities).

We may have the genetic predisposition to represent objects, thoughts, etc. with sounds, but not necessarily the same sounds. So how would I know what your sounds meant unless you somehow taught me? All I can do is observe you making sounds, but I don’t know what can be deduced from that. — Pinprick

You figure that out through reasoning. We’re born able to discern ALL sounds and then dispose of the neurons we don’t use so as to attend to the sounds we’re commonly exposed to. We don’t really ‘teach’ in such an explicit way. Children don’t pick up language by learning grammar first and then applying word in a regimented manner. It is pretty much more of a trial and error and task specific task - meaning we deem meaning by association (location, tone, and present objects and feelings/sensations).

I don’t know how we could if we weren’t able to teach each other. — Pinprick

We’d still learn. Teaching is merely a purposeful instrument to direct learning. ALL creatures ‘learn’ in some fashion or another simply by being exposed to various experiences.

One thing can be said. If everyone walked around on their hands and knees and a new child was born they would mimic the other humans and walk around on their hands and knees too. In such a world a bipedal human would be viewed as an act of superhuman skill or strength - if it was found to be advantageous I’m sure the ‘trend’ would quickly spread to a point where crawling on all fours became shunned for it’s inefficency.

I am something like a carrot, yet to be unearthed,
I am something like a table,
I am something like a see-saw too.

I am something like a marble, rolling down a hill,
I am something like a parcel,
I am something like the colour of skies.

I am something like something else.

:up:

Do you frequent any poetry forums?

:up:

996 words - have not reread for errors or comprehension (will have a go at that tomorrow lunchtime probs).

A Philosophical Portolano

Many a philosopher has outlined the scope and depth of philosophy throughout the ages. Analogies of layered onions, islands or vast oceans have painted a picture varied in hue and subject matter that remains to this day open to degree of personal interpretation.

One point shares a common expression. That is how philosophy has progressed (for better or worse) over the course of human inquiry into and about the world. One thought builds on another, rising - as they say - upon the shoulders of others. The of how ideas and concepts have shaped humanity’s involvement with the environment is quite pronounced, although often enough these paradigm shifts go relatively unseen during their development and even their initial fruition.

Let us view the body of philosophical knowledge as a foreign landscape with roughly sketched out shores. As time goes on we traverse over the same seas and oceans and occasionally venture forth onto the shores of knowledge with fear and trepidation of what lies within its hinterlands. Promising peaks are spied, and lush canopies admired; yet up close the blasting winds and the uncompromising ferocity of natures myriad creatures infest such seen-from-afar ‘beauty,’ and perhaps naive delight. Even so we circle this landmass, over and over: from culture to culture, from epoch to epoch. This shoreline is our recycling of thoughts and ideas across time. With each revolution around this landmass we end up back at the same spot uttering the same questions with slightly altered perspectives.

Much like the physical Earth our human appreciation of our planet has radically shifted over time, even though on the surface little has really changed. Back in the recesses of human experience people were certainly not aware of where they were or the scope of the planet they stood on - for them the idea of ‘scope’ beyond their immediate world is about as nonsensical to us today as our having a scope beyond the confines of known (and even theoretical) natural phenomenon.

Nevertheless, we were, like our distant ancestors, circling the same curious lands. The difference is we’re circling faster than we’ve ever circled before. Our conceptual perspectives have shifted more frequently over the past few millenia than previously. The change from one generation to the next stretches the generations apart, pulled as we are into a thin flotilla of views and ideas that at either end grow more and more at odds with one another. Where before our fleet ambled like a curious child fro cove to cove, exploring and exchnaging, now we’re focused on longer and longer streches of cliffs and beachs, sometimes unable to rest and find a tributry of fresh thought.

Our ‘ideas’ and ‘thoughts’ appear smaller and less important than they once did. This is merely due to our desire for containment - we ‘know’,the world now rather than having it lie beyond our comprehension. Our world view is infinite now as opposed to a physical bound finite cosmological view that allowed the thoughts and ideas to roam more freely and playfully. We’ve essentiallu done away with a huge part of human adventure by refusing the adventure as ‘childish’ or ‘impractical’.

The first hearth created the first contained human experiment. From the beating heart of this fire we arranged our items and ourselves in ‘order’. We slowly erected walls and pyxed ourselves into our own cosmological experiment ... but like an obsessive experimenter we seem to have forgotten that what lies outside our selfmade cosmos (our godhood draping us in shadowy reclusion) is the worldview we were shaped by, our finite land unmeasured and untamed, steeped in a lived experience. We imagined gods and then instead of holding such wonder chose to imitate them (to cage ourselves). From the limits of our mind came into being the physical limits of our life. The confinement led to easier control and we played at god with our unearthing of causal being - the seasons happened outside our walls whilst within lay summer heat, and the night came in yet we captured it and burnt the nights away (moreso in the modern age than ever before).

Still we circle the landmass, yet now we only see a shoreline whilst on our boats we make models of caves and lagoons, of forests, mountains and hills. We’re ‘safe’ here but there is nothing to learn Here - in terms of what lies within the dangers of the hinterlands.

As has happened many times before, an epochal shift is upon us. The wall/s to our confines are strtsched and bulging, our telescopes, speed of sailing and maps make the world seem but a dot compared to how such was viewed millenia ago.

‘God is dead,’ as said by the kin of philosophical discourse. I think it is more the case of modern humans that our experiment of being god, of confined circumspection, is quickly dying. We prefer to assume this ‘death’ is other; happening to someone or something else.

A broad and farsighted scope within our walls is infinite - it is also useless for a mobile human ‘spirit’ (in the humanist and wholly unromantic sense of the term!)

In a clinical and more conclusive summation what is being addressed here is how ‘history repeats itself,’ alongside our everexpanding appreciation of nature and the overload of information in this ‘information age’. As techinqiues have refined their scopes over time so to has the depth and breadth of the human perspective been confined. The Earth itself has gone from the cosmological constant in psychological terms, to a mere speck of rock orbiting a mere dot of gas - the ‘finite’ has been replaced by the ‘infinite’ and we’ve lost the tree of life due to the forests of our own making. We were ‘gods’ but we thought ‘gods’ were better than us - that was the mistake. A god is essentially a messed up entity fumbling around in humility and awe of its own situation (this is what humanity is).

I’m out of time! Will see if I can do something tomorrow during my lunch break.

I’ve think I’ve made that crystal clear already.

Medicinally, it prevents cancer, which is the hist mortality rate among-st the elderly (in a non-specific age group of "elderly). — Shawn

False. This is has not been proven by any stretch of the imagination (mostly wishful thinking). For recover to help with pain and nausea of cancer victims: yes, it’s very useful.

After smoking during stressful periods in my life, I find it the most beneficial and healthy drug in existence. — Shawn

Anecdotal and nonsensical.

Hindu San script — Shawn

That isn’t a thing. Imbuing something with mystical-based mumbo-jumbo as an opener rouses suspicion - especially when you don’t grasp that what you misheard, or probably read somewhere on some new age forum, is in fact Sanskrit NOT ‘San script’.

Can anyone tell me why this should be banned on any grounds? — Shawn

It already is banned, and recently such bans have been lifted. So maybe you meant to ask IF the ban should be lifted?

For general health and well being it can be destructive as can alcohol. I would guess that alcohol does more damage to people, and society, than cannabis ever could though - just my opinion. Given that kids experiment prior to reaching the legal age required (as for alcohol) there - (edit: deleted sentence. Was just something about the attitudes in different countries and how some minimally supervised introduction to such substances would be a good thing - unlike in US where young adults leave home and start to take alcohol in relatively unsupervised situations leading to all kinds of problems!)

A lot of nonsense circulated about cannabis extracts opening up a world of cancer cures and such. Without a doubt the greatest benefit seems to be in pain relief.

Have you been diagnosed as schizophrenic by a healthcare professional?

Have you actually been diagnosed as schizophrenic and had a second snd third opinion?